A long almost three weeks I haven't posted... shame on me. And there are few excuses, only that I had a dense and travel-rich period here at Burda. Last week the Annual Magazine Conference (Zeitschriftentage) where the industry gathered for two days in Berlin. The Publishers' Night was a tremendous networking event. Dr. Burda in his capacity as President of the German Magazine Publishers held a keynote on the political challenges ahead especially the protecting the freedom of press and fostering the media industry as innovation driver, e.g. through a active broadband policy. Designated Chancellor Dr. Merkel acknowlegded the important role of media for society and said that she wouldn' t support new advertising bans by the European Union.
Also, we had our 4th brain & food lecture at the Burda Fotostudio in Munich. Focus-editor and blogexpert Jochen Wegner gave a wonderful insight in the blogosphere. Over 70 colleagues and guests attended and tried blogging. Sixapart and Hewlett Packard helped us with technology. Heiko Hebig blogged on the event, thank you Heiko.
And last week Starcontrol was launched as beta by the Burda People Group. Congrats to the team. Starcontrol tracks 'attention' charts of 10.000+ people covered by BUNTE. It creates an index of several hundred news sources and blogs to calculate attention values on a daily basis. There are several categories such as politics, culture or music. It is to some sort an application of the "economy of attention" which Prof. George Franck has proposed. BTW his new book 'Mentaler Kapitalismus' is worth reading - I liked it a lot.
Heute abend ist HalloHunud (www.hallohund.de) live gegangen! 
